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Saturday, October 6, 2007

Critique - Walkcycle










Hey,

nice, a lot better. The head rotation adds character, you could turn her head a bit more towards us (frontview), not by much though.
The legs are good, although you seem to have a tiny Y rotation on the feet as they plant and move back. But the knees and everything is nice and smooth.
Since you reduced the feet, I think you need to reduce the arms, in terms of how far forward and backwards they swing. Now that the legs and the body up/down got smaller, they stick out a bit (with the big hands :) ). That's just something that you see after the tweaks you've done. But all you need to do is scale your z or x (don't know which one), it will slow down the arms a bit which fine though.
So everything looks good, the last thing to fix is a hiccup in the upper body (which is visible in the head because of that). So for reference, look at the front view, her right side of the head. It moves screen right until x4, then hits a wall. Same with the upper body that goes screen left til x24 then to the right on x1 and x2. So first fix the upper body. Look at the shoulder spheres and track the spacing frame by frame, making sure that you don't have sudden stops. Once that is fixed, do the same thing with the head. Make sure that the rhythm is nice and without hiccups.

Sideview, check the timing of your arms as the swing forward and back. Her right arm seems to slow down a tiny bit as it approaches x22 but then speeds up again. It's also visible in the front view. The screen left hand/arm (more then the other one) seems to shoot forward and to the right and then back the same way. You could add a nicer arc as the arm goes back.

Go through your arcs frame by frame, or pick a spot of the character's body. For example, I look at the right side of the head, the hair to be exact and go through the spacing. So x1 to x4 the head goes to the right, then stops at x5 til x7, then to 8 it moves a little bit to the right, then nothing, then from 9 to 10 a tiny bit to the left, then nothing til x12, then to the right til x15, nothing til x18, then a broad movement to the left til x24, then suddenly to the right from x1 to x2 and so on. Then check your keyframes in the graph editor and adjust them or set keys (whatever approach works better for you, but it's easier to adjust the keys and the curves in the graph editor), so that the spacing gets polish.

Another example would be (in the sideview) her left arm. After the forward swing, at x16, track the spacing of her forearm/hand. x16 to x17, little movement (big drag on the hand, which you could reduce a tiny bit actually), 17 to 18, bigger spacing, then the culprit from 18 to 19, where the spacing as a bit smaller again, but mostly, the arc gets a hiccup. If you look at the wrist, it doesn't go down, just to the right, then down again from 19 to 20. After that the arc is fine. So take your dry erase marker, put a dot on the wrist on every frame and you'll see the hiccup (and also a slow down towards from x24 to x1, but then a bigger spacing, and then a smaller one again - doesn't stick out as much as the one on x18 but might as well clean that up). Don't forget to use the dry erase marker (or whatever spacing check tool you prefer).

That's it. You're pretty much done.

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